Newsmax TV Hires Ex-Fox News Executive to Serve as CEO

Newsmax TV has hired former Fox News executive Michael Clemente to serve as CEO, the company announced on Monday.

“Michael is one of the most accomplished executives and producers in television and digital news,” said Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax Media, Inc. in a statement. “He is widely respected in the industry and has won accolades for his high journalistic standards. It’s an honor for us to have him leading our team.”

Clemente, who once oversaw long-form programming at Fox News, was the first high profile executive to leave the channel after the company’s longtime president, Roger Ailes, departed the company. Media reports at the time attributed Clemente’s ouster not to sexual misconduct, but rather an internal power struggle between him and then network co-president Bill Shine.

Before Fox, Clemente spent nearly three decades at ABC News and also did a brief stint at CNN.

“Newsmax has demonstrated the ability to adapt and thrive in the highly transformative digital news world, and was one of the first major online outlets to create a TV brand in cable,” said Clemente in the same press statement. “I’m excited to take on this new role at Newsmax during an incredible period of change, in a country eager for truth, understanding, and engagement in the news process.”

Clemente will be joining his old Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly — who doesn’t officially work or Newsmax — who frequently appears on the channel to offer commentary.

Ruddy is known to have been close to President Trump and frequently appears on television to discuss the president’s mood on various matters. He raised eyebrows at the Financial Times Future of News conference last month when he casually told an audience that “the president is not a fact-based president. He’s a salesman.”

"What Bill Clinton did to the issue of sex to an entire generation, I believe this president is doing on issues of decency, on issues of conspiracy theories, on issues of fake news," Brzezinski said in June 15. "I think it's that simple and we're desensitized if we even argue it."

"If the president seems delusional about his accomplishments, you can point no further than that room," Brzezinski said in June 14. "There are no real men in the inner circle of the White House... none at all."

“Donald Trump, again, being a schmuck, thinking he can buy people’s integrity by inviting them over to the White House and wowing them,” Scarborough said on June 7 when discussing a dinner party at the White House. “That’s how he thinks. I know that first hand.”

“If any CEO, in a Fortune 500 company, was behaving this way, he or she would be removed immediately… they would take him out, he would have psychiatric evaluation and he would no longer be the CEO,” Scarborough said on June 6.

Scarborough called Trump a “bumbling dope” on May 11 because of the way a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister was handled.

“Looking at the front pages of the newspapers here… The Wall Street Journal also, you look, of course, at pictures. The shameful picture where the United States press corps was kept out but the Russians were allowed in,” Scarborough said while holding up the paper.

Scarborough slammed Trump on March 31, saying that Russians are lucky that POTUS is “stupid enough” to pick up their fake news.

“We’re obsessed on how the Russians have hacked, how the Russians have tried to impact this, how the Russians have tried to impact the White House,” Scarborough said. “We’re really just playing into their hands.”